Timothy Valshtein/Old Gold & Black

ESPN polled coaches and “industry sources” to figure out what were the worst college football jobs in the Power Five conferences. This process concluded that Wake Forest was the worst.

An excerpt from the article is below:

“Wake was nearly a consensus No. 65, and that’s not a good thing. It’s not in a terribly difficult league, and yet the academically stringent private school colloquially known as “Work Forest” is all but invisible — to recruits and the general public — in its state and region, let alone nationally. Put it this way: When we asked a room of several assistant coaches which program they thought would be last in our polling, they didn’t respond with Wake — because they had forgotten that Wake was a Power 5 school. Really, history just might show that Jim Grobe, who was 77-82 in 13 seasons and took the Deacons to five bowl games (including the BCS’s Orange Bowl in ’06), was more of a miracle worker than anyone truly recognized at the time.”

According to the article, the criteria included “factors such as location, administrative stability, support from that administration, facilities, recruiting base, path to conference titles/playoff, sense of tradition, fervor of the fan base, too much fervor from the fan base …”